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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026

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"Just be normal" is possibly the worst objection to anything I could think of.

Why? Being normal is how societies form and continue to function. If people just acted on any whim they had we'd live in chaos. Some places now do live in chaos because people do that as a norm. They litter, burn trash, shoot each other.

And before you say, "well those affect other people" so does transing yourself. You become a visual blight, you become a blight on language (demanding people use obviously incorrect pronouns), you demand special dispensations. Its all abnormal and taxing on society.

"I am the MOTHER in all contexts except for this particular one where the law requires me to declare I'm a father to act in the best interest of my child" is interesting, but a total nothing burger when you consider literally every other conceivable circumstance of a parent acting in the best interest of their child.

Pretending to be a mother is directly in contradiction with acting in the best interests of the child. How would we possibly accept any of this person's other actions as being so?

Gleefully posting laughing emojis on the twitter repost is fun and all, but i think the appropriate response to a handwave "lol stop being wierd and you won't have any problems, freak 😜" is "well that's just not how the world works."

Because too many wrong people have won battles such as this. This is a good battle to fight to make the world better.

Historically as in pre-enlightenment? We've spent a couple hundred years trying pretty hard to steer away from this type of ridiculousness for good reason.

It is more recent that exile was used, but exile was a good punishment, if we had more unoccupied land I think it would be good to re-instate it. Its a happy middle ground between the death penalty & long prison sentences and the leniency that plagues modern society with rampant low level criminality and antisocial activities. If these people were in a town in Texas in the 1840s they'd be told they should leave. If they did, they'd go to Mexico or California (and one of those places would probably execute them unless they reformed) but, if they didn't they'd be shot.

Why? Being normal is how societies form and continue to function. If people just acted on any whim they had we'd live in chaos. Some places now do live in chaos because people do that as a norm. They litter, burn trash, shoot each other.

Being abnormal does not equate to "acting on any whim". And being abnormal is definitely not a clear cut negative for society. What is it, like 75% of silicon valley unicorn founders are autistic? People with a propensity to not conform, socially or otherwise, seem to be disproportionately progressing society right now.

Pretending to be a mother is directly in contradiction with acting in the best interests of the child. How would we possibly accept any of this person's other actions as being so?

The law does, generally, accept people who are not optimal parents as the parents of their own children. And in this case, where these two people are undoubtedly the parents of this child, it should definitely accept it also.

Are you arguing that the Irish government should not accept that the actual, biological parent, is a parent, in this case?

Because too many wrong people have won battles such as this. This is a good battle to fight to make the world better.

If they did, they'd go to Mexico or California (and one of those places would probably execute them unless they reformed) but, if they didn't they'd be shot.

An argument that basically goes "Trans people are weird, they should choose not to be, in an ideal world we would exile them or kill them, because I've had enough of losing these arguments" is just not working for me. Maybe you have all this background info that, if included, forms this into some rationale that I could follow. But as presented, this is the same level of "boo outgroup" ranting that the Reddit lefties are doing about everybody who voted for Trump. We can all just pick the political opponents we don't like, call them freaks and wish death on them because we're tired of each other.

I just come from a position where I think that type of rhetoric makes the world a worse place. I think it's a dogshit take, not because I am actually pro trans or anything. I'm pretty moderately to aggressively against the movement. But if you have some total insensitivity towards the specific issues in question, and can't differentiate from a bad expectation and a reasonable expectation (you seem to explicitly state you don't care what the issue is) you're definitely in a position to make the world worse. Which is what you're doing.